Generally, instruments used in laparoscopic surgery are removed from individual sterile packages and placed on a surgical stand (Mayo Stand), or the surgical instruments are contained in a kit which may contain more than one surgical instrument. However, when arranged on the stand, either the entire kit is placed flat on the stand, or the instruments are removed individually from the kit and placed on the stand as if they had been taken from a sterile package.
Thus, in either event, there is no useful mechanism for containing the surgical instruments in a compact, easy-to-view manner. In this fashion, therefore, there has not been provided a simple easy-to-use presentation instrument which allows the surgical instruments to be taken out of the kit and placed on the stand without individual removal and subsequent placement.
Also, since only two or three ports are usually available at any one time, the instruments are often removed from the body cavity and replaced on the stand, only to be needed and used again. This design helps facilitate the containment, ordering and identification of instruments used at multiple distinct intervals throughout a single procedure. And, due to the high degree of similarity of these instruments with exception to the working end, this tray helps delineate each instrument from the others by making the working end more visible and improves the use of color code identification by ordering the instruments.
It is, therefore, an object of this invention to provide a compact viewing tray capable of being emplaced in a sterile package containing a group of surgical instruments. It is also an object of the current invention to provide these instruments after removal from the tray in a much more visible manner. Finally, it is an object of this invention to provide a receptacle for the instruments so that they can be taken and removed from the stand and adequately counted during and after surgery without the need to arrange the instruments on the stand individually, and thereby take unnecessary time to, effect such arrangement.